Test Version 1.88g Release Notes

Ogrelin

On this beautiful day, we bring you Archery adjustments because we'd rather stay inside and feed our inner gamer.

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Dark Age of Camelot
Test Version 1.88g Release Notes
Clustering and Archery Changes
March 20, 2007

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NEW THINGS AND BUG FIXES

- The Classic and Shrouded Isles zones have been clustered.

- As Quickness no longer has an effect on Archery, all Quickness on bows has been converted to Dexterity. This will effect any dropped bows already in your inventory, as well as those dropped in the future.
Note: This will not effect items created by the Random Object Generator (ROG).

- (Pendragon Only) - (Albion) The rapier guild gifts for level 10, 15, 20, and 25 have been changed so the damage and skill are set properly as Thrust.

- (Pendragon Only) - Additional items have been converted from the old archery bonuses to the new bonuses.

- (Pendragon only) - Messaging has been updated for the Archery system.

CLASS CHANGES AND FIXES

Archery

- The timer on Siege Shot has been reduced to 15 seconds.

- Siege Shot will no longer share a recast timer with Phase Shift.

- Volley is now implemented and is a Ground Targeted Area Effect archery shot, that will hit up to a maximum number of targets. The maximum number of targets is 2 more than the number of the shot. IE: Volley 1 will hit three targets max, and Volley 8 will hit 10 targets max.

- Wild Power has been removed from archers and replaced with the Realm Ability Falcon's Eye.

- Queuing archery shots will now work properly. This fixes a bug with certain combinations of shots, such as Crit Shot, that caused oddities when queueing.

TRIALS OF ATLANTIS WORLD NOTES
Oceanus Encounters

- The scrolls for the artifact 'Gem of Lost Memories' will drop more frequently now. This brings these scrolls up to the same drop rate standards as the rest of the artifact scrolls.

Item Notes

- Legendary bows will now grant a damage type buff when equipped to change the damage type of your non-magical archery shots. Note that the mundane damage type buffs (Blunt Arrows, Thrusting Arrows, Slashing Arrows) will overwrite these buffs, in which case you may re-equip the bow to re-apply the buff.

- The studded versions of the Guard of Valor in Albion and Midgard now have the same bonuses to Spell Duration and Range that the Hibernian Reinforced version has.

CATACOMBS WORLD NOTES

Item Notes

- Hibernian Darkspire Jewelery drops have been adjusted from power level 50 to power level 49. This brings their power level in line with the same drops from Albion and Midgard.

hogscraper

Aw, that sucks on the clustering of the zones...

No more multi server dragon raids? That blows. For a player that has done a lot of dragon raids, doing 4 in a night on every server actually added a little more fun to them and definitely increased the rewards. Now we get to wait in line like it used to be because  1 guild decides to camp the encounter? Weak... 4 different zones meant that it was that much harder for people to camp certain encounters. If someone was at orc camp  for 16 hours, you could check one of the others out. Now... Ghetto...

JulianDracos

Clustering of the zones is the best thing they can do if that want DAOC to last beyond the end of the year.  The community needs life support and new blood.  The constant PL, bots, and the empty world that new players experience is not a way to build and keep a community.  People have problems doing things that require groups now.  Why?  Because doing so requires more effort than a Raid.  With a raid all you need to do is post it and have people need it and then you will usually have enough people show up.  Now if you need a group then you need to find like minded people that want it and then schedule it.  3 years ago people would have not had this problem.  Even if DAOC had the population back at 250,000 getting a group together would be difficult if all of the players were like many we have now. 



I can see being upset over the dragon raids.  I am sure they will find some way to accomodate that.  As for loosing your best camp spot, so what?  Go find another spot.  There are plenty of spots to level in.  If people want to be anti-social and just PL that is what TD are for.  As for the rest I see it as a way to not only change the perception of the game being barren but also to have players go to other camps, explore, go use the expansions, etc.  This change will go a long way to helping the long term health of the game. 

hogscraper

In 4 years, 3 clusters worth of servers, I have never been without a guild, and have never been without enough people to help out with what I needed to get done. If a player decides they want everything the game has to offer without being in a guild, nothing, not even clustering will help them. And if you join a guild and they are incapable or unwilling to help you, move on to something better. I really do wish, though, that they would add some kind of mechanic where new players to the game had an easier time finding good guilds. I really like the Mentoring program in Entropia Universe. More knowledgable players take on newer players as Disciples and when the disciple reaches  a certain level of training, the mentor receives a reward of some kind in game. It benefits everyone involved as well as the game itself. Entropia Universe is skill based so pl'ing is irrelevent and I'm not sure whether or not this kind of system would work in a class based game like dark age, but something like it would do a great deal for attitudes, friendships and player bases in general.



Look at the numbers using /who on any given cluster, there are always more people in PVE than in RVR. I'm sure many of these are only in PVE to get better gear for RVR, but most of the people I know like both areas equally.  Taking away areas where many players have to go or else shut the game down is wrong. I understand that a while back, there was only 1 o each location. But back then there were also only 1 server's worth of encounter campers to worry about. Every time I try to take a group to Summoners hall we have to wait for a Korean group that does nothing but farm that place all day every day. I believe it will be a great boon to a few newer players and a great detriment to everyone else. If the game wasn't so old, where a great deal of people know about the best hunting spots it wouldn't be so bad. This will really not impact the game at all in a good way considering the end result will be 3-5 server's worth of people vying for the best stuff, and same old solo's still looking at empyty areas with nothing to do.